Gendered news

Yesterday’s New York Times has a front-page story by Jane Gross about middle-aged women who leave high-powered careers to care for ailing parents. It’s a deeply moving and interesting article, but here’s what irked me. First, we get this passage:

Women, now as always, bear a disproportionate burden for elder care and often leave jobs, either temporarily or permanently, when the double duty becomes overwhelming , according to recent studies of family care-giving, women in the workplace and retirement patterns.

Then, a few paragraphs down, there’s this:

Despite a growing number of men helping aging relatives, women account for 71 percent of those devoting 40 or more hours a week to the task, according to the National Alliance for Caregiving and AARP in a 2004 study. Among those with the greatest burden of care, regardless of sex, 88 percent either take leaves of absence, quit or retire.

“It is a safe assumption,” based on an array of research, “that women are more likely to put their careers on hold or end them because of care-giving responsibilities,” said Carol Levine, director of the Families and Health Care Project at the United Hospital Fund and an adviser to the National Alliance for Caregiving.

In other words, about 30% of those devoting 40 or more hours a week to caring for aging parents or relatives are men. Yes, the burden on women is disprpoportionate; but let’s not forget that a lot of women, particularly in the 45-and-over demographic the Times is talking about, were either at home or only working part-time even before their parents needed care. So, in fact, while it is most likely true that women are “more likely to put their careers on hold or end them” to care for elderly family members, we don’t really know how much more. Then why does the Times treat this as if it were exclusively a women’s issue, and give men only a passing mention?

In fairness, I should note that this is not just an issue of focusing on women as victims; the article emphasizes, and perhaps even overemphasizes, the positive aspects of caregiving:

Middle-aged women may see leaving a high-powered career as an opportunity, not a sacrifice, many experts say, which distinguishes the Daughter Track from the Mommy Track. Arlie Hochschild, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who has written extensively about the postfeminist conflict between work and family, said women in their 50’s who had “proved what they set out to prove” were often drawn to “new sources of satisfaction” but were reluctant to admit an ebbing of ambition. The needs of ailing parents, Ms. Hochschild said, can offer “cultural shelter” – an excuse “to pull away and look inward.”

It is, however, a matter of focusing on women; and, ironically, this focus doesn’t necessarily help women, either. (If a corporation is thinking of promoting a woman in her early fifties to a top-level position, will their decision be affected by thinking that she’s likely to walk away from the job to care for her ailing mother?)

Of course, as is all too often the case, the Times’ coverage of this issue is also hopelessly elitist. “Women” is synonymous with “urban professional women.” We don’t hear so much about the problems faced by, say, a female supermarket clerk who can’t afford to quit her job and still has to care for an ailing parent — or by a male plumber who is in exactly the same position.

Skewed news

At the Camp Katrina blog, Spc. Phil Van Treuren points out an “interesting omission” in the New York Times report on the latest suicide bombing in Iraq. (Hat tip: John Cole) The article says:

A suicide car bomb exploded Thursday near an American convoy at the entrance to the main hospital in the volatile town of Mahmudiya, killing at least 30 Iraqis and wounding dozens of others…

The omitted detail, supplied by the Associated Press, is that at the time of the bombing the U.S. soldiers were “handing out candy and food to children” (The Washington Post also mentions that nearly all the dead were women and children).

Was the omission an accident? Or was the Times downplaying, consciously or not, both the brutality of the “insurgents” (“freedom fighters” to some) and an instance of friendly rapport between the American soldiers and the Iraqi population?

Like John Cole, I’m generally very wary of assigning malign motives to such things and seeking out the minutest evidence of “liberal bias” (that way madness lies). But still, this kind of thing makes you wonder. I mean, the fact that the U.S. convoy was handing out candy and food to children at the time, and that one of Kurt Vonnegut’s heroes plowed an explosive-laden car into a crowd of kids, is not exactly a minor detail.

Meanwhile, The Heretik points out something else: the version of the Associated Press story Camp Katrina links to, on the Fox News site, edits AP’s copy to change “suicide bomber” to the idiotic “homicide bomber.” This is right-wing newspeak at its most laughable. Any bombing that kills people is a “homicide bombing.” The distinct feature of “suicide bombing” is that the bomber also kills himself (or herself). On at least one occasion — the London bombings last July — the insistence on referring to suicide bombings as “homicide bombings” already led Fox down the path of glaring stupidity. I’d like to know who first came up with the imbecilic idea that the phrase “suicide bombing” somehow makes the bomber sympathetic. I’d also like to know when someone at Fox is going to have enough sense to put an end to this ridiculous policy of rewriting wire copy to fit their propaganda slant.

Meanwhile, as The Heretik wisely says:

Do we just see in the “news” what we want to see? Our soldiers struggle to do their best, to be most human in the most inhumane circumstances. Those people are still dead. Damned media, damned blog. Damn us all. Oy.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Made with the help of some photos taken in the local park, and some creative filtering via Microsoft Digital Image Pro (the poor woman’s Photoshop).

From the "It would be funny if it weren’t so sad…" department

On the heels of the Kansas State Board of Education’s embrace of pseudo-science, John Cole (via Donklephant) points to this hilarious item:

Beginning in 2008, public school students in Kansas will be tested under that state’s new science standards, which open the door to criticism of evolution. Here are sample questions — some new, some adapted from current biology exams — to help them get ready.

1. Some sources suggest the earth is approximately 4.55 billion years old. Others estimate the earth is 6,012 years old. Without favoring one estimate over the other, calculate the likely age of God. Show your work.

2. The presidency of George W. Bush is an example of:
a. Heredity
b. Parasitism
c. Survival of the fittest
d. Predestination
e. Judicial activism
f. Divine intervention

3. If male zebra finches are raised by foster parents of another species, the Bengalese finch, they will court female Bengalese finches instead of females of their own kind. Which statement best explains their behavior?
a. Birds are animals!
b. Imprinting
c. Gold-digging
d. What happens in Bengal stays in Bengal
e. Co-habituation
f. If you’d ever had the chance to court a Bengalese finch, you wouldn’t have to ask

Read the whole thing here.

Anti-feminist? Moi?

Barry (Ampersand of Alas, a Blog), who posts at this blog and with whom I have engaged in several interesting discussions, has characterized me as an “anti-feminist” on his blog and, most recently, in a thread on the Women’s Studies list about my postings here.

In response to Daphne Patai, who questions this label and points out that I have frequently criticized conservative anti-feminists as well, Barry responds:

Cathy knows I respect her, but it remains the case that the overwhelming majority of her writings about feminism are dedicated to attacking feminism and feminists. Why should the word that accurately and concisely describes Cathy’s position – anti-feminism – be taboo? I think we lose more than we gain when we say that accurate words cannot be used for fear of hurting someone’s feelings.

While I don’t think that my feelings can be particularly hurt by any label anyone chooses to slap on me, I think that labeling me (or, say, Wendy McElroy) “anti-feminist” (1) is inaccurate and (2) establishes a rigid ideological definition of what “feminism” is. I also think that, whether or not Barry intends it that way, “anti-feminist” is a pejorative. Indeed, I would say that Barry himself uses it as a pejorative: the section on his blog dedicated to critics of feminism is called “Anti-Feminist Zaniness,” and in this 2004 thread (update: link now corrected), he says, in a partial defense of yours truly, “I’m not saying that … she doesn’t say stupid, anti-feminist things…”

What’s the dictionary meaning of “anti-feminist”? My Webster’s, sadly, offers none, but it defines feminism as “the doctrine advocating social, political and all other rights of women equal to those of men,” as well as “an organized movement for the attainment of such rights for women.” An anti-feminist, then, must be someone who opposes all that. Meanwhile, here’s what we get from The Free Dictionary:

Anti-feminist: Characterized by ideas or behavior reflecting a disbelief in the economic, political, and social equality of the sexes.

And on the same page, a citation from the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2003):

antifeminist – someone who does not believe in the social or economic or political equality of men and women

The American Heritage dictionary, by the way, lists “bigot” and “male chauvinist” as synonyms for “antifeminist.”

I think anyone familiar with my work will know that this does not accurately describe my views.

Here’s what I wrote in the introduction to my 1999 book, Ceasefire: Why Women and Men Must Join Forces to Achieve True Equality (the introduction to which is available online at the BarnesandNoble.com website):

Do I still consider myself a feminist? No, if feminism means believing that women in Western industrial nations today are “oppressed” or if it means “solidarity with women,” as essayist Barbara Ehrenreich claimed on National Public Radio in 1994. Yes, if it means that men and women meet each other as equals, as individuals first and foremost; if we remember what British philosopher Janet Radcliffe Richards wrote more than fifteen years ago: “No feminist whose concern for women stems from a concern for justice in general can ever legitimately allow her only interest to be the advantage of women.”

I still believe the feminist challenge to woman’s place was right. I think we can take pride in the fact that a woman is now expected to be her own person and make her own way in the world, and that the public sphere is no longer considered a male domain. …

….

I believe we still need a philosophy to guide us on the journey of an unprecedented transition: a philosophy that is not pro-woman (or pro-man) but pro-fairness; that stresses flexibility and more options for all; that encourages us to treat people, regardless of sex, as human beings. If sentimental traditionalism won’t get us there, neither will the gender warfare that would destroy our common humanity in order to save it. I don’t know if this philosophy should be called feminism or something else. But the biggest impediment to its development is what passes for feminism today.

In the same introduction, I talk about how and where, in my view, the “new feminism” has gone astray. Agree or disagree with me, but I think my critique clearly comes from a feminist point of view.

Personally, I prefer the term “dissident feminist.” If we’re going to assign labels, I could argue that a lot of people currently calling themselves “feminists” are in fact anti-feminists, because they routinely infantilize women (Catharine MacKinnon, for instance, argues that if children cannot meaningfully consent to acting in pornography, then neither can women), or because they don’t really believe in equal treatment for men and women (those, for instance, who argue that women who commit domestic assault ought to be treated differently from men who do the same). If they can claim the title of “feminist,” then surely so can I. I should add, by the way, that quite a few of my “anti-feminist” positions (for instance, on fathers’ rights and on domestic violence as a two-way street) are shared by former National Organization for Women president Karen DeCrow. Is she an “anti-feminist,” too? I should also add that Ceasefire got a largely positive review in the New York Times from feminist law professor Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, while Danielle Crittenden (with whom I am lumped together by Barry’s “anti-feminist” label) slammed it in The Weekly Standard as too pro-feminist.

Yes, I’m critical of “established” feminism — so what? Should critics of the traditional family model based on 1950s-style sex roles be labeled “anti-family”? They often are, but I suspect that Barry doesn’t consider this label fair. Should liberal Catholic groups which take a critical stance toward the present-day Catholic hierarchy and reject Catholic dogma on abortion, contraception, homosexuality, marriage for clergy and women’s roles be called “anti-Catholic”? (Bill Donohue would probably agree, but I doubt that Barry would.) Should people who frequently criticize U.S. policies and regard them as a betrayal of America’s true principles be labeled “anti-American”? Again, I can think of a few people who would do that, but somehow I don’t think that Barry would agree. In fact, I suspect that Barry may not even agree with calling the late Andrea Dworkin “anti-male” (at least, after her death he wrote that his favorite article about her was one in The Guardian titled “She Never Hated Men“). Yet Dworkin’s writing are filled with vitriolic invective against men and maleness that make my critiques of feminism sound like valentines.

Not every critic of feminism objects to the term “anti-feminist” (just as not every feminist objects to being called anti-male: Mary Daly, for instance, proudly designates herself as such). I’m sure Phyllis Schlafly would have no issue with this label. I, on the other hand, find it not only insulting and inflammatory but misleading as well.

The "Intelligent Design" battle, at the next level

Over at FOXNews.com, Cato Institute Center for Educational Freedom director Andrew J. Coulson proposes a solution to the battle over whether evolution or “intelligent design” should be taught in public schools: more privatization of schooling.

We’re fighting because the institution of public schooling forces us to, by permitting only one government-sanctioned explanation of human origins. The only way for one side to have its views reflected in the official curriculum is at the expense of the other side.

…

Fortunately, there is a way to end the cycle of educational violence: parental choice. Why not reorganize our schools so that parents can easily get the sort of education they value for their own children without having to force it on their neighbors?

Doing so would not be difficult. A combination of tax relief for middle income families and financial assistance for low-income families would give everyone access to the independent education marketplace. A few strokes of the legislative pen could thus bring peace along the entire “education front” of America’s culture war.

While I’m in favor of more choice in education, I don’t think it would end the culture wars over ID and evolution. What happens at the next stage, when private school graduates start applying to universities? Consider, for instance, this story (hat tip: John Cole):

Cody Young is an evangelical Christian who attends a religious high school in Southern California. With stellar grades, competitive test scores and an impressive list of extracurricular activities, Mr. Young has mapped a future that includes studying engineering at the University of California and a career in the aerospace industry, his lawyers have said.

But Mr. Young, his teachers and his family fear his beliefs may hurt his chance to attend the university. They say the public university system, which has 10 campuses, discriminates against students from evangelical Christian schools, especially faith-based ones like Calvary Chapel Christian School in Murrieta, where Mr. Young is a senior.

Mr. Young, five other Calvary students, the school and the Association of Christian Schools International, which represents 4,000 religious schools, sued the University of California in the summer, accusing it of “viewpoint discrimination” and unfair admission standards that violate the free speech and religious rights of evangelical Christians.

…..

A lawyer for the Association of Christian Schools International, Wendell Bird, said the Calvary concerns surfaced two years ago when the admissions board scrutinized more closely courses that emphasized Christianity. In the last year, the board has rejected courses like Christianity’s Influence in American History, Special Provenance: Christianity and the American Republic, Christianity and Morality in American Literature and a biology course using textbooks from the Bob Jones University Press and A Beka Book, conservative Christian publishers.

The officials rejected the science courses because the curriculum differed from “empirical historical knowledge generally accepted in the collegiate community,” the suit said. Calvary was told to submit a secular curriculum instead. Courses in other subjects were rejected because they were called too narrow or biased.

With more private schooling, the debate will simply shift to the next level when universities quite rightly refuse to recognize ID-based biology courses as fulfilling science requirements. (One more example here, by the way, of a phenomenon I mentioned recently: religious conservatives — some, at least — adopting the victim politics of the cultural left, complete with daffy lawsuits.) I should add, by the way, that the Christian schools’ association may have a point with regard to the history courses rejected as too “narrow” or “biased”: I’m not sure they’re much worse than a lot of the stuff taught in many public schools under the guise of multiculturalism. But when it comes to science, the universities are on solid ground. We will, no doubt, see more such battles in the future.

Kurt Vonnegut, off the deep end

Not many opponents of the war in Iraq would go so far as to praise suicide bombers. But now, Kurt Vonnegut boldly crosses that line. (Hat tip: Eugene Volokh.)

In an interview with The Weekend Australian, the 83-year-old novelist, out promoting his anti-Bush book of essays, Man Without a Country, says this:

Vonnegut said it was “sweet and honourable” to die for what you believe in, and rejected the idea that terrorists were motivated by twisted religious beliefs.

“They are dying for their own self-respect,” he said. “It’s a terrible thing to deprive someone of their self-respect. It’s like your culture is
nothing, your race is nothing, you’re nothing.”

Asked if he thought of terrorists as soldiers, Vonnegut, a decorated World War II veteran, said: “I regard them as very brave people, yes.”

He equated the actions of suicide bombers with US president Harry Truman’s 1945 decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

On the Iraq war, he said: “What George Bush and his gang did not realise was that people fight back.”

Vonnegut suggested suicide bombers must feel an “amazing high”. He said: “You would know death is going to be painless, so the anticipation – it must be an amazing high.”

Author David Nason adds with some deadpan irony, “Vonnegut’s comments are sharply at odds with his reputation as a peace activist and his distinguished war service.”

No kidding.

I don’t think Vonnegut’s rantings really require commentary, though James Lileks provides some. (For one, Vonnegut seems not to notice that his “brave people” are mainly murdering their own fellow Iraqis, including children. Or that their idea of their “culture,” in many cases, includes the brutal killing of women and gays for sexual transgressions.) The only real question is whether the left will distance himself from this lunacy. Last year, Vonnegut’s “Bush = Hitler” rant, “I Love You, Madam Librarian”, appeared in the respected left-of-center magazine In These Times — a publication that supports mainstream Democratic candidates, and whose masthead features such prominent, non-lunatic-fringe leftists as Barbara Ehrenreich — and was reprinted on Michael Moore’s site. Has he finally gone too far this time? So far, a Google search turns up no condemnation of Vonnegut’s statements on any left-wing blogs.

I am truly to see Vonnegut descend to this; I’ve long been a fan of his novels — Cat’s Cradle, Slaughterhouse Five, Mother Night, God Bless you Mr. Rosewater — and his short stories. I think writers who find modern Western civilization soulless and stultifying — as Vonnegut clearly does — can offer useful insights into what’s lacking in our society and our lives, and create niches of alternative values that complement those of the dominant culture; but they ought to stick to literature. When they channel their distaste for modern civilization into politics, the results are usually not a pretty sight.

Defining torture

Over at ProteinWisdom, Jeff disagrees with me and Matt Welch on the subject of torture.

Jeff writes:

For my part, I have no trouble whatsoever with techniques like waterboarding, sleep deprivation, disorientation, extreme temperature change, etc—primarily because I don’t think promoting discomfort or fear constitute “torture.” But then this is precisely the point: when the definition of torture hinges on abstractions like “anguish” and “distress,” and on qualifications to those abstractions like “severe,” then the problem of defining torture effectively—and distinguishing it from other
techniques of active interrogation—becomes context and ethos-specific.

…

Cathy states her claim clearly: she is opposed to interrogation techniques that cause physical suffering. But as I’ve argued before, “suffering” is going to prove specific to the individual undergoing the interrogation, and if that is the benchmark for torture, then just about anything can come to count as torture, given the proper circumstances, and depending on the prevailing cultural attitudes …

It seems to me that Jeff and some of his commenters are blurring the line between “physical discomfort” and “physical suffering” (the term I used). The use of the term “discomfort” to refer to such techniques as immersion in freezing water, exposure to extreme heat or extreme cold, or even being keept in stress positions for prolonged periods of time — let alone inducing a sensation of drowning (waterboarding).

One of Jeff’s commenters, Chris, may be on to something when he says that the definition of torutre is a bit like “the old, ‘I can’t tell you what obscenity is, but I know it when I see it’ kinda thing.” Chris himself defines torture as “the attempt to extract information through the direct infliction of physical pain to break down barriers of resistance.”

But here’s a question: is there a clear line between “pain” and “discomfort”? I have memories of several occasions when a doctor or nurse told me just before a medical test, “You’re not really going to feel any pain, just some discomfort,” and a few moments later I found myself mentally assessing the accuracy of that statement in language that I generally prefer to avoid using on my blog.

Several of Jeff’s commenters suggest this standard, with which I understand Jeff agrees as well:

Any form of physical or mental stress or abuse we routinely use on our own people going through boot camp, SEAL BUDS training, pilot S/E/R/E training, etc. shall be heretofore known as “not torture.”

First of all: do we know that these techniques (i.e. immersion in cold water) are used on prisoners in degrees no more extreme than they are used on our own trainees?

Second: if we use these techniques on our own trainees with the specific purpose of training them to withstand torture, does that mean it’s not torture if we do it to prisoners?

Third: If the standard is “anything to which some people in our society are subjected with their consent is not torture,” then why draw the line at military training? Not to be crude, but tens if not hundreds of thousands of Americans every year are subjected to a medical procedure that involves having a plastic tube inserted in their rectum. Would that be an acceptable thing to do to a prisoner?

Another poster writes:

I believe that the treshold of torture would be the threat or follow-thru of PERMENANT (sic) PHYSICAL HARM or the threat or follow-thru of DEATH. Any use of electricity is off the table.

Well, waterboarding does, in my opinion, involve the threat of death. Furthermore, “permanent physical harm” as a standard leaves room for a lot of things that would be considered torture even by most advocates of “coercive interrogation.” If you apply a piece of red-hot metal to someone’s skin, the burn will heal — no permanent physical harm done. If you beat a man on the testicles with a rubber hose, no permanent physical harm there either. I’m sure one could think of many other examples.

A few more points:

As I said in my first post on the topic, legitimizing torture “creates the very real danger that at least some of the torturers will enjoy it, particularly if they have been primed to see the one being tortured as an evil person getting his just deserts.” It seems to me that at least a couple of Jeff’s posters clearly enjoy the prospect of terrorists being made to suffer. Call it “moral preening” or whatever you like, but I believe that this is a sentiment we simply can’t condone. What are the chances that a U.S. soldier or special agent authorized to engage in “coercive interrogation” will take pleasure in the prisoner’s suffering, and perhaps amp the “coercion” up a little beyond what is (supposedly) needed to extract the information? And when does this degrade us to a level most of us would find unacceptable?

Also: let’s not forget that not all the prisoners are “terrorists.” We could be inflicting this “discomfort” on an innocent person.

And finally, one of Jeff’s posters asks:

Why take prisoners? If they cannot be squeezed for information they are not worth the effort to keep them. Just humanely shoot them at the front and save all the trouble.

I think it’s a misconception that information can be extracted from prisoners only through interrogation techniques that include the infliction of physical suffering. Psychological manipulation can be quite effective in this regard.

The war on terror, fighting dirty, and lessons from a certain campy TV show

Once in a while, gentle reader, I’m going to inflict a dose of Xena fandom upon you. But bear with me. It’s actually quite relevant to the discussion we’ve been having about torture, the war on terror, and the dilemma of whether one can win and keep one’s hands clean. (See my earlier posts here and here.)

A second-season Xena: Warrior Princess episode, “The Price” — made in 1996 — deals with an almost uncanny prescience with a lot of the issues involved in the War on Terror today.

Xena, a reformed warlord with a dark past, and her young idealistic companion Gabrielle find themselves in an Athenian fort besieged by a mysterious tribe of nomadic warriors, the Horde. The general who commanded the fort has been killed, and Xena takes command (since this is a fantasy version of the ancient world, her gender is never an issue). Things do not look good: the Athenians are running out of soldiers, weapons, and supplies, reinforcements are not expected, and the Horde — with whom Xena had a run-in years ago — are a vicious bunch known for skinning their captives alive. In a desperate situation, Xena resorts to desperate measures. She orders Gabrielle, who has taken over the infirmary, to withhold food and water from wounded men who won’t be able to fight. She also kills a fleeing enemy with an axe in the back because he has been inside the Athenian battlements and has seen their defenses.

When Gabrielle is horrified, Xena retorts, “This is war! What did you expect, glamor? There are no good choices — only lesser degrees of evil.” Gabrielle begs her to stop fighting and try to find another way. “They are not like us,” says Xena. “There is nothing about them that we can or should understand.”

Finally, after Xena tortures a captured Horde warrior by using pressure points to cut off his air supply in order to get him to disclose the location of the Horde camp, Gabrielle confronts her again.

XENA: We didn’t ask for this. If they want a fight to the death, they’re going to get it. What part of that didn’t you understand?

GABRIELLE: You! Who are you, Xena? What happened to the Xena that I know?

XENA: That Xena can’t help us now. If losing her is the price for saving us all, I’ll pay it.

Gabrielle has other ideas. Deciding that she would rather “die my way” than lose her humanity and watch Xena lose hers, she gives water to the Horde prisoner and then sneaks out of the fort to give water to the Horde wounded dying outside the gates. Unexpectedly, Gabrielle’s actions lead to a truce that allows Xena to step back and take a deep breath; and then, Xena establishes enough communication with the Horde prisoner to figure out that he has his own code: He will not fight an opponent of superior rank but will reaction with deference and submission. Armed with this knowledge of the Horde’s peculiar ideas about rank and honor, Xena comes up with a strategy to defeat them: She challenges their leader to single combat and beats him (whereupon his own men kill him to avoid loss of face, and vanish as mysteriously as they appeared).

Some conservative Xena fans dislike “The Price,” which they consider squishy. I don’t think it is. Yes, a part of the episode’s message is that it’s important to try to understand the enemy and to see them as human; but this understanding is used to defeat the enemy in the most effective way possible, not join them in a group hug. Xena’s arguments for realism in the face of war are actually quite compelling, while Gabrielle’s idealism may be less compassionate than selfish and self-righteous (she’d rather see all the people in the fort die than compromise her moral purity). But the point is that by itself, Xena’s harsh realism can’t win the war any more than Gabrielle’s stubborn idealism: the two must complement and temper each other.

Could there be a parallel in this to the War on Terror, in which we have our own Xenas and Gabrielles? The realists need to be in charge if we’re to survive; the idealists must have a voice in the matter if we’re to keep from losing our soul.

But there’s a caveat; more than one, actually.

At the end of the episode, Xena tells Gabrielle that the Horde will be back; their defeat is only temporary, and ultimately, they can be stopped only by peacemakers — Gabrielles — in their own midst. That’s not very encouraging, if analogized to the War on Terror (though perhaps the analogy is that radical Islamic terrorism can only be vanquished when the majority of the Muslim population turns decisively against it).

The other, more important caveat is that, on Xena, “The Price” is not the last word. In later story arcs, Gabrielle has to confront the fact that she cannot fight for the greater good as she wants to without getting her hands dirty. In the third season, she chooses to allow a man to be executed in a case of mistaken identity, knowing that if he is freed, he will not only get away with the numerous crimes he has committed (as a Roman commander) but will likely commit more atrocities. By the end of the series, having shed much of her idealism, Gabrielle must lead a tribe of Amazons on a suicide mission in an episode that consciously echoes “The Price,” and has to make some harrowing decisions — for instance, to order one of her soldiers to a certain death to create a distraction that will allow the others to get past the enemy.

There is no way to fight for a good cause witout getting one’s hands dirty. But there are still lines that shouldn’t be crossed. There are times in war when a morally shocking tactic that seems necessary isn’t — and may even be counterproductive. And sometimes, it’s the pesky idealists with their moralizing who help us realize that.

What Murtha meant; what Krugman says

So, did Rep. John Murtha call for a quick withdrawal from Iraq or not?

In Slate, Fred Kaplan makes a pretty good case that he did not:

Take a close look at Murtha’s now-infamous statement of Nov. 17. You will not find the words “withdrawal,” “pullout,” or their myriad synonyms. Instead, he calls for a “redeployment” of U.S. troops—which may seem like a euphemism for withdrawal but in fact is very different. Toward the end of his statement, Murtha lays out the elements of what he calls his “plan”:

To immediately redeploy U.S. troops consistent with the safety of U.S. forces.
To create a quick reaction force in the region.
To create an over-the-horizon presence of Marines.
To diplomatically pursue security and stability in Iraq.

He doesn’t elaborate on any of these ideas, but it’s clear they don’t add up to “cut and run.” True, his final line reads, “It is time to bring them home,” but his plan suggests he wants to bring, at most, only some of them home. The others are to be “redeployed” in the quick-reaction forces hovering just offshore.

Murtha stressed this point Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press, saying he wanted to “redeploy the troops to the periphery.” He used that phrase—”to the periphery,” meaning just offshore or across the border from Iraq, not all the way home—three times during the interview.

Kaplan also points out that, interestingly enough, Murtha’s proposal looks like a Cliff’s Notes version of a recent report, Strategic Redeployment: A Progressive Plan for Iraq and the Struggle Against Violent Extremists, published by the Center for American Progress and co-authored by Lawrence Korb, assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration, and Brian Katulis.

The Truth Laid Bear disagrees (hat tip: Instapundit), stressing the words “immediately redeploy” and also pointing to the conclusion of Murtha’s speech as posted on his website:

Our military has done everything that has been asked of them, the U.S. can not accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. IT IS TIME TO BRING THEM HOME.

(All caps in the original.)

So, which is it? “Cut and run” or phased redeployment?

It’s pretty clear that Murtha’s plan envisions a continuing role for the U.S. military in the region. Yet his concluding line seems to contradict that. Could it be that he let his rhetoric run away with him, and sacrificed a credible plan to a good slogan?

I don’t think Murtha is a “cut and run” guy, though I do think that his proposal is in some ways naive. For instance, he says that ending the occupation “will send a signal to the Sunnis to join the political process for the good of a ‘free’ Iraq.” From everything we know, I’d say that the Sunni Arabs in Iraq are at least as nervous and resentful about getting shafted by the Shiites and the Kurds as they are about the presence of the American troops. (Most of their violence is directed at the Shiites, not the Americans.) I’m also not sure why Murtha thinks it’s so important that we announce our withdrawal before the election scheduled for mid-December. I would say that, on the contrary, it would be a good idea to wait and see if the election results in some stabilization before annoucing any drastic moves.

In sum, on Murtha, I agree with Andrew Sullivan: Murtha is wrong, but so are the attempts to smear and belittle him.

Meanwhile, in yesterday’s New York Times, Paul Krugman heaps praise on Murtha — “a much-decorated veteran who cares deeply about America’s fighting men and women” — in a column bluntly titled, “Time to Leave.” Since Krugman is now trapped behind the solid walls of TimesSelect, some excerpts:

[D]efenders of our current policy have had to make a substantive argument: we can’t leave Iraq now, because a civil war will break out after we’re gone. One is tempted to say that they should have thought about that possibility back when they were cheerleading us into this war. But the real question is this: When, exactly, would be a good time to leave Iraq?

The fact is that we’re not going to stay in Iraq until we achieve victory, whatever that means in this context. At most, we’ll stay until the American military can take no more.

… And time is running out. With some military units on their third tour of duty in Iraq, the superb volunteer army that Mr. Bush inherited is in increasing danger of facing a collapse in quality and morale similar to the collapse of the officer corps in the early 1970’s.

So the question isn’t whether things will be ugly after American forces leave Iraq. They probably will. The question, instead, is whether it makes sense to keep the war going for another year or two, which is all the time we realistically have.

Pessimists think that Iraq will fall into chaos whenever we leave. If so, we’re better off leaving sooner rather than later. As a Marine officer quoted by James Fallows in the current Atlantic Monthly puts it, “We can lose in Iraq and destroy our Army, or we can just lose.”

And there’s a good case to be made that our departure will actually improve matters. As Mr. Murtha pointed out in his speech, the insurgency derives much of its support from the perception that it’s resisting a foreign occupier. Once we’re gone, the odds are that Iraqis, who don’t have a tradition of religious extremism, will turn on fanatical foreigners like Zarqawi.

The only way to justify staying in Iraq is to make the case that stretching the U.S. army to its breaking point will buy time for something good to happen. I don’t think you can make that case convincingly. So Mr. Murtha is right: it’s time to leave.

Note that Krugman may be endorsing a more radical plan than Murtha is proposing. And note how Krugman simultaneously marshals two contradictory arguments to bolster his case: things in Iraq are likely “turn ugly” after our departure in any case, so we’d better leave soon; our departure is likely to make things better.

Is the state of the military as grim as Krugman suggests? There is no doubt that the engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan are a major strain on our armed forces. But the reports on recruitment and reenlistment are somewhat contradictory. Furthermore, according to a recent Pew Research Center poll, military officers (admittedly a fairly small sample) are considerably more likely than members of the news media, academics, and foreign affairs experts to believe that the effort to establish a stable democracy in Iraq will succeed.

And there is something else. Krugman quotes the marine from James Fallows’s article in The Atlantic Monthly; but he does not say that Fallows’ long essay (available to subscribers only) takes the opposite of a “cut and run” approach. An excerpt:

Let me suggest a standard for judging endgame strategies in Iraq, given the commitment the United States has already made. It begins with the recognition that even if it were possible to rebuild and fully democratize Iraq, as a matter of political reality the United States will not stay to see it through. … But perhaps we could stay long enough to meet a more modest standard.

What is needed for an honorable departure is, at a minimum, a country that will not go to war with itself, and citizens who will not turn to large-scale murder. This requires Iraqi security forces that are working on a couple of levels: a national army strong enough to deter militias from any region and loyal enough to the new Iraq to resist becoming the tool of any faction; policemen who are sufficiently competent, brave, and honest to keep civilians safe. If the United States leaves Iraq knowing that non-American forces are sufficient to keep order, it can leave with a clear conscience—no matter what might happen a year or two later.

In the end the United States may not be able to leave honorably. The pressure to get out could become too great. But if we were serious about reconstituting an Iraqi military as quickly as possible, what would we do? Based on these interviews, I have come to this sobering conclusion: the United States can best train Iraqis, and therefore best help itself leave Iraq, only by making certain very long-term commitments to stay.

Fallows, it should be noted, is highly critical of the way the U.S. has handled the training of the Iraqi military so far, and he makes a number of specific suggestions for what we should do. “Leave now” is definitely not one of them. Is it, perhaps, a tad disingenuous for Krugman to enlist Fallows to his side without disclosing that Fallows’s position differs so dramatically from his own?

Krugman, I think, is the kind of war critic who truly gives war critics a bad name, and who gives weight to the notion that opposition to the war is driven mainly by hatred for Bush. Remember, Krugman is the guy who once managed to blame Bush for the rise of virulent anti-Semitism in the Muslim world.

We need a debate about an exit strategy in Iraq, and about the best way to ensure that the sacrifices made so far are not in vain without sacrificing thousands more lives. As I have argued here over the past few days, rhetoric demonizing war dissent is not helpful in this debate. But when it comes to Krugman — not to echo the White House, but the word ‘irresponsible” does come to mind.